A useful article by Patrick Hoskins in Monday’s Times addressed the question ‘Who really owns the UK?’
Foreign investors (two fifths) together with hedge funds (10 per cent) owned half of all the shares of UK listed companies at the end of 2008. In the 1960s private investors owned a half, but their share is now down to about 10 per cent. Pension funds today own only about 1 in every eight of all shares.
The article did not address the question of who owns the mortgages outstanding on the residential buildings which make up two-thirds of our total national net worth.
Does all this mean that our future will be like that of an Ireland or Jamaica of the past – at the mercy of absentee landlords?
